Installation Program - Full Install or Install Loader

[captainproton]

Maybe this should be in the "Off Topic" section, I am not sure.

I need advice and your feelings on this!

I get annoyed when I download an installation program which is only a few hundred kb in size only to find that when it runs it downloads a larger package containing the actual program.

All my life I have released full install packages, that is you download the entire program and install it. But now I find that I am struggling with the idea of using an Installation Loader for my own stuff.

When I submit my software to sites such as tucows it takes about 2 months for the listing to appear (because I don't pay them for priority listing) by which time I have released an update which may resolve a serious error or bug. The people that download from tucows get an old version because tucows have there own copy they don't link to my copy. If I update my listing on tucows it takes another 2 months to appear.

Right now I am considering using an installer that downloads the latest version from my web site, which is exactly what I hate doing. It means that customers download a smaller install file which then goes off and downloads a further 2mb.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Is this sort of thing generally acceptable?

[WILL]

If it's an app why not have an Update button or option in your menu?

This actually isn't too bad considering that Blizzard used to do this ages ago back when they were a game development company before. :P (via Diablo StarCraft, Battle.net, etc)

You could work out the downloader right into your actual game/app then have it do the actual update on restart of your game.

I think the easiest way to do this though is to have a separate startup menu that would normally start your game exe (I believe they call this a front end menu?) You could work out which does the downloading and how you'll update the game exe, but this is a way to make it a little more seamless.


I remember playing Diablo/StarCraft on Battle.net and if you didn't have the current version it would prompt you and if you gave it the OK, it would download it for you then somehow exit the game and start the update file automatically. That wasn't too bad, and it usually had some pretty good fixes/adjustments so I was pretty happy afterwards.

[captainproton]

I actually have a web update function in it now. When it is installed it asks if you want to check for updates. But, for some reason is doesn't work on all machines and I have no idea why. The install creates the games .ini file and puts the version number into it. Then, at the end of the install the versioncheck.exe runs and compares that with the current version on the web site. Every now and then it gives a message "can't open pictureslots.ini' and exits.

The front end menu is a good idea, I might look into that. Right now players have to log in to the game so I could put a web update option there and make it a separate app which calls the main exe.

Good thinking, thanks.

Craig

[savage]

I'm not sure what software you are using, but Technomage wrote a cross-platform app that checks to see if a new version of the app is available and downloads it. If you have the latest JEDI-SDL you should find it under teh SDL_Net directory ( IIRC ).

[captainproton]

Being the lazy $^#&% that I am I opted to modify my existing version check software. I still don't know what caused it to fail on some machines but each time it did it was related to the ini file. So, I wont use the ini file now.

I am extracting the version out of the exe file and then comparing it to the version online.

The front end menu I have started working on because I think it has merit. The SDL-NET is probably a good solution as well but because I already had code that did the same sort of thing - why reinvent the wheel.

I don't like downloadeds - you know, the couple of hundred k apps that go off and download a few meg of the real application. But I thought it might solve me problem. I have managed to avoid it.

Thanks for all your help.

[WILL]

Another option could be to put your game code into a DLL file and have your EXE just download a new DLL files before starting a new game should it check and detect a newer version from the update server. But this would take a bit of pre-planning and engineering at the start of your project to do.

But in the end it's whatever is easiest and more convenient for both you and/or your players.